


A House in the Country

by TheOldAquarian



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1920s, 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Art, Awkward Flirting, Aziraphale and Crowley on Holiday, Emotionally Repressed, Fluff and Angst, Footnotes, Historical Romance (Good Omens), Literary References, M/M, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Romance, The Lake District, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vacation, Wings, an unholy mix of book and show canon, come for the flirtatious banter and stay for the lovesick pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-07-19 21:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19980418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOldAquarian/pseuds/TheOldAquarian
Summary: “Really Crowley, I can’t very well go and live with a demon until I get the next assignment from Upstairs-”“It’s not living together! Look, there’s 36 bloody rooms in the place. You can take one wing and I’ll take the other. We’ll be no more living together than you’re living with those idiots on the fourth floor who don’t tune their piano.”Aziraphale gave a shudder at the mention of these unmusical neighbors, then considered. “I have rather wanted to see the Lake District in summertime.”He was going to say “This is an obviously silly idea,” or “We both know the Arrangement doesn’t cover holidays at the lake,” or even “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”What he actually said was, “I think that would be delightful. When should we make the trip?”





	1. Le Canard Courageux

To an angelic observer, many things that happen on Earth look fairly absurd, but only a few every century are head-banging-on-heavenly-wall stupid. World War I was one of those things[1]. 

There was some latent speculation among the angels that humans were ticking right along towards the prophesied End, and so much destruction was wrought that the more tender hearts of Heaven felt little relief upon discovering that things were very much still in the Middle. Down below, many a demon wondered if humanity had finally developed the taste for mutilated limbs and pointless bloodshed that had long marked the height of refinement in Hell.

As in every human conflict, no matter how arbitrary or unfair, Heaven and Hell saw ample opportunity for the collection of souls. Angels believe war is a good time to win souls for Heaven because people do not otherwise lay down their lives for their neighbors. Demons believe war is a good time to win souls for Hell because people do not otherwise spend their time devising the best ways to blow their neighbors to smithereens.

At the close of the war, Aziraphale was exhausted, heartsick, and hadn’t had a decent cup of tea for years. The trenches of Brittany were not particularly welcoming places to those used to lounging about on clouds, and they were even less pleasant to those angels who make themselves at home in cozy Soho bookshops. Aziraphale wondered, not for the first time, if trying to inspire courage in individual humans at the front was really the best use of celestial resources. The archangels, at least, had the ability to end the war directly, and it seemed to Aziraphale that souls were rarely at their best when tossing hand grenades. Such thoughts were improper for a principality[2], however, and he tried to put them out of his mind. He’d had lots of practice.

The war ended. Pomp, circumstance, and a smiling Gabriel made their way in a heavenly delegation to Versailles for the signing of the peace treaty. Aziraphale, feigning an ethereal headache, made his excuses to the other angels and paced the streets nervously until he found a secluded and unfortunately sticky wine bar, _Le Canard Courageux_. The tables needed a thorough cleaning and the room was far too hot, but the angel was disinclined to be picky. With a bottle of vinegary Merlot ordered, he poured and downed two glasses before sparing a glance at the bar's other occupants.

A thin angular man sat hunched over a nearby table. Crowley was scowling at the last drops in his bottle of cognac as though personally disappointed in each of them. Aziraphale approached until he was almost touching one of Crowley’s spindly, well-dressed elbows and gently cleared his throat.

“You know, I do believe that’s intended to be drunk in increments of glasses.”

Crowley started, then his serpentine eyes focused behind his dark glasses and a corner of his mouth curled upwards.

“Oh hullo angel. ‘M just having a nightcap[3]. Your people came out for this song and dance too eh?”

Aziraphale nodded. “Do you mind if I join you? Human company has been rather trying of late.”

Crowley moved one leg, then lurched awkwardly after it. Aziraphale lifted the tails of his coat to sit on the same bench.

“Awful work, trying to get those poor creatures to watch out for one another. They have such pitifully short lives as it is,” Aziraphale shook his head. “The food was something dreadful as well.”

Crowley exhaled. “Well, so sorry you didn’t like _the food_. I was just supposed to be running telegrams for the Downstairs Office but our building got bombed in 1915. Had to miracle myself some unbroken bones.” 

“Oh _don’t_ go measuring your suffering against mine, this never goes well,” Aziraphale snapped. Crowley opened his mouth to retort and the angel decided to steer them towards higher ground. He was never more anxious to rise above petty argument than right after he had concluded a jab. 

“Look, Crowley, why don’t we meet up back in London? I’ve hardly seen you since you woke up from that frightfully long nap and it would be, well, good to catch up.”

The demon softened. “Would be nice. Though if anyone needs to _catch up_ , it’s you. Look at that coat.” 

Aziraphale made a spirited defense of his old-fashioned clothes, and they fell to arguing for a bit about who made a more convincing 20th Century human. At a pause in the conversation, Crowley tipped the bottle of cognac skyward and probed the final drops with his snakelike tongue, which Aziraphale pointedly avoided watching. He could feel the wine bubbling below his eyes.

“Do you still have that automobile?” the angel asked. “Last time we met I thought your driving was going to discorporate us both.”

“Oh no,” Crowley said, clunking the bottle on the table and waving at the bartender for another. “Picked up a new one in ‘16. You’ll like it, goes much faster.”

“Oh. Wonderful.”

The demon grinned[4]. “You know, I think I did such a bang-up job with the telegram system, Downstairs might actually let me alone for awhile. If Upstairs is willing to do the same for you, we could take a break for a bit.”

“A break? Angels don’t have _breaks_ ,”Aziraphale reached for his wineglass and found it conveniently in his hand, although he’d left it on the other table.

“Well, p’rhaps it’s wishful thinking.” Crowley accepted the second bottle of cognac from the waiter and clumsily wrenched the stopper off “But I think you could use a holiday.”[5]

Aziraphale wasn’t sure if it was the wine or the too-warm air or the relief of sitting besides an old, living friend after a war, but he found himself very much wishfully thinking.

Footnotes

1 So were instant coffee and telemarketing, but there are only so many atrocities one prologue can contain.  [ return to text ]

2 They would only be slightly less offensive in a seraphim, and rather gauche in an archangel. [ return to text ]

3 It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon. [ return to text ]

4 Demons do not like to admit to smiling. For the sake of Crowley’s dwindling dignity, let us say he bared his teeth with infernal amusement. [ return to text ]

5 He had never told anyone, but Aziraphale had attempted going on holiday five times before, most of which he had abandoned within weeks out of a mixed sense of duty and nerves. The last time he had been inspired by Walden, or Life in the Woods to rent a small cabin next to a pond, which he had abandoned out of a sense of extreme itching from mosquito bites. [ return to text ]


	2. Raspberry Scones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Really Crowley, I can’t very well go and live with a demon until I get the next assignment from Upstairs.”

The sharp smells of aged vellum and new ink mingled with the gentle aroma of fresh raspberry scones in Aziraphale’s bookshop. It was an unusually hot day, and London was humid and smoky on the other side of the windows. Indoors, a demon and an angel sat across from each other, ensconced in two armchairs that had gradually lapsed from comfort into lumpiness over the last two centuries. A large pitcher of iced tea sat sweating on a footstool between them.

“...the point is, bugger them all if they don’t think you deserve a break,” Crowley declared with a flourish of his half-empty glass.

“Well it’s not exactly customary,” Aziraphale replied, looking critically at the pitcher. “Do you think there’s enough sugar?”

“M’okay,” Crowley said. “But really, you don’t think a single angel has taken a few days to wander around the Cotswolds or sit back and stretch their legs by the seaside?[6] ”

Aziraphale considered this for a moment while adding several spoonfuls of sugar to the iced tea. “Well, there’s a certain amount of, er, unstructured scheduling that’s generally approved of. But it’s supposed to be used for spontaneous goodness[7] .”

“You’re always spontaneously good. High time you took a holiday, really.” Crowley raised an eyebrow and took a drink of iced tea.

Aziraphale gave a laugh that was cut short by a loud cracking sound. “Crowley, will you stop chewing on the ice? It makes an infernal noise.”

“Can’t help it, I’ve got infernal teeth.”

Aziraphale groaned. “Crowley I swear to Heaven…oh, thank you.”

The demon had broken apart a particularly flaky scone and handed half to Aziraphale, looking pleased with himself.

Crowley continued, “You wouldn’t even have to take a train, I could drive us both and a couple of suitcases.” 

Aziraphale’s forehead creased slightly as he swallowed several large gulps of tea. The mention of suitcases should have inspired doubts about the rather impulsive and frivolous nature of Crowley’s proposal. In fact, it had mostly inspired a packing list. 

“Not entirely proper for the ethereal and the occult to travel together,” he finally said. Something about his intonation suggested a weak conviction looking for one last argument to put it out of its misery.

Crowley was prepared to oblige.

“Well,” the demon ladled another glass of tea, “I  _ may _ have some supernatural assurance that a nice old house in the Lake District is going to be empty for awhile—you know they’re tearing down all those old estates now. It  _ might _ be that anyone who goes near this one gets an overwhelming feeling that it’s haunted something devilish.” 

“Is that so?” Aziraphale was caught between gratitude and hesitation[8] .

Crowley paused for a moment, then added, “You’ll be welcome to drop by, especially if you bring more scones and some tea that’s not so blasted sweet[9].”

“Really Crowley, I can’t very well go and live with a demon until I get the next assignment from Upstairs—”

“It’s not living together! Look, there’s 36 bloody rooms in the place. You can take one wing and I’ll take the other. We’ll be no more living together than you’re living with those idiots on the fourth floor who don’t tune their piano.”

Aziraphale gave a shudder at the mention of these unmusical neighbors, then considered, “I have rather wanted to see the Lake District in summertime.”

“Got a great view of Windermere,” Crowley added. “Lovely place from which to do some spontaneous goodness.”

The angel was going to say  _ “This is an obviously silly idea” _ or  _ “We both know the Arrangement doesn’t cover holidays at the lake” _ or even  _ “I don’t want you to get in trouble.” _

What he actually said was “I think that would be delightful. When should we make the trip?”

They fell to arguing about the ideal time of year for a visit and speculating about how much luggage would fit in Crowley’s car absent divine or satanic intervention. Both of them were in high spirits and the discussion carried them through most of the afternoon and all of the remaining scones.

“I do hope there will be some places to eat nearby,” Aziraphale mused. “Everything I know how to make is only suitable for breakfast or tea.”   


“Well, I can help. I do use the kitchen in my flat, you know, I don’t just swallow all my groceries whole[10] .”

Aziraphale suddenly stopped pacing around a display of books on arithmancy.

“I had better send a quick note Above, I think. Just as a courtesy, to let them know I’ll be in Cumbria for a bit.”

Crowley sighed. “Maybe I should write to my lot as well. Stave off any unexpected performance reviews.”

They each retrieved a pen and a fresh sheet of paper and set to composing their letters. The angel reached for his reading glasses and sat at his desk while the demon bit down on the end of the pen and flopped across the floor. 

Aziraphale had for years been in the habit of sending friendly cards to the upstairs office with updates about his work, recommendations for humanlike behavior to be practiced by any earthbound angels, and best wishes for all his heavenly brethren. He was not in the habit of receiving replies in kind.

After much deliberation and several miraculous erasures, his letter read:

_ Dear Archangel Gabriel, _

_ I hope you have been well after your recent incorporation at Versailles. I have returned to my accustomed post in London under the guise of used bookseller A. Z. Fell. At present, there are some personal matters that will be diverting my attention to Cumbria. If you need anything from me, please don’t hesitate to call at my temporary residence, a charming human institution called “The Mortal Man” just outside of Ambleside[11] _ _.  _

_ I remain, as ever, your faithful executor of the Great Plan. May God smile upon you, and please give Her a smile back from me if you see Her in the office. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Aziraphale of the Eastern Gate _

“Tell you what,” said Crowley, who was ringed by crumpled papers on the floor, “Everything I’ve written is rubbish so I’ll just tell them I was asleep if they ask.”

“How very demonic of you,” said Aziraphale. There was disapproval in his voice, but it was preceded by the slightest touch of amusement, like a grace note in a musical score.

They cleared away the tea things and Aziraphale walked Crowley to his gleaming, double-parked car. The demon peered briefly over his sunglasses and gave a wave as he careened away into the darkening streets. Aziraphale looked up at the first stars of the night struggling out of the smog and suddenly wished he could skip forward to watch a sky that truly sparkled.

Footnotes

6 It isn’t terribly common. Sandalphon had taken a great liking to the Adriatic Sea and returned there several times, but only because he found its coastal air to be morally edifying.  [ return to text ]

7 Aziraphale was making an educated guess about company culture. Heaven’s employee handbook is only 4 pages long and most of it is platitudes and illustrations. There is no section for frequently asked questions. Hell’s employee handbook is 7,307 pages and most of it is legalese and obsolete parking directions.  [ return to text ]

8 The reader will excuse the frayed nerves of an angel recently out of the Great War. However, the reader will also note that the poor angel’s heart was thumping along at a pace typically evoked only by exemplary crème brûlée and the final acts of especially melodramatic operas.  [ return to text ]

9 The reader may further note that the poor demon’s hands were sweating so profusely that he could hardly hold his tea, Hell help him.  [ return to text ]

10 In fact, he was very much in the habit of doing so during his sleepier decades.  [ return to text ]

11 Aziraphale assured himself that he was likely to eat dinner at this public house often enough that this wasn’t really a lie.  [ return to text ]


	3. Of Luggage and Leavetaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had accompanied each other on long journeys many times before, though not primarily for recreational purposes.

Months passed, and the angel and demon remained in London. Things were quiet in Heaven and no more of a racket than they usually are in Hell.

The streets grew banked with snow, as if the houses themselves were drawing up the covers against the chill. On the window panes traces of frost expanded like a secret that grows in the silence, too fragile to touch. Wintry air nipped, then bit, then gnawed upon uncovered faces.

Aziraphale’s bookshop attracted more than its usual trickle of customers around Christmastime. Mostly, they were looking for curios that might be wrapped in colored paper and given to a loved one[12] . The would-be patrons cooed over velvet-bound volumes. They ran appraising fingers up and down spines, and breathed on things rather more than the angel thought permissible. Aziraphale’s manner towards this clientele fell something short of holiday cheer.

Several of the more inquisitive perusers left the shop unable to recall how they had found it, and curiously disinterested in ever perusing it again.[13]

Aziraphale and Crowley met for cocoa on frosty mornings, for spiced wine at Yuletide, and for tea on alternate Wednesdays. They hardly ever alluded to their upcoming voyage; they were not in the habit of speaking about the future.[14]

As winter gave way to spring, icicles that had been beautiful hanging in the eaves of shops melted into unspeakably disgusting puddles. The day for departing from London had been fixed as the third of May, chosen by a pinprick on a calendar after a lot of waffling about what exactly constituted ‘mid-late-spring’ and ‘probably not a lot of rain.’ 

May arrived in a flurry of angelic preparation and a fraying of demonic nerves.

Crowley had been expecting Aziraphale to bring too much luggage, but he hadn’t expected to park at the bookshop early on the morning of the third and find all four of the angel’s steamer trunks lined up outside its doors, with half a dozen other satchels and bags and one very crumpled hatbox piled around them. 

“Oh there you are, I was wondering when you’d get here,” Aziraphale said, balancing a stack of tiffins in his hands.

“They do have shops in Cumbria you know,” Crowley said, leaning out of the car window. “Angel what is all this?”

Aziraphale set the tiffins down and brushed off his waistcoat, breathing rather heavily. He wasn’t wearing his jacket and his sleeves were rolled above the elbows. It was an attitude that Crowley associated with the periodic renovations of Aziraphale’s bookstore, projects with which Crowley almost always assisted, despite his habitual objections to physical exertion[15] , dust, and appearing to care too much.

“Well, I thought it was prudent to bring the essentials,” Aziraphale said, readjusting his bow tie with short, deft fingers. “You never know what a human might have overlooked.”

“How do  _the essentials_ fill four trunks and twice as many bags?” Half of Crowley was hanging out of his car window as he tried to count the offending luggage.

“Unlike you, I don’t spend my nights sleeping, you know,” Aziraphale said. Something about the way he said ‘sleeping’ made it sound indecent. “I intend to get through quite a few books during this”–he paused for an acceptable word–”this spring and summer.”

Crowley rubbed one side of his face with his hand in exasperation, although he always enjoyed Aziraphale’s delicacy of feeling about sleep. “Angel, this stuff’s not going to fit in my car.”

“Oh I don’t know”–there was a scraping sound as the back of Crowley’s car distended–“that that’s entirely”–a thump as the sides of the automobile stretched–“accurate,” Aziraphale finished brightly, looking at the miraculously enlarged car with immense pride.

“For Satan’s sake, alright, put your things in,” Crowley said, recognizing a losing battle. “But so help me, angel, if you can’t put this car back the way it was after we get there I will drop you back in London if I have to fly us both with my own wings. ”

Aziraphale beamed and handed Crowley the tiffins he’d set down. “Mind putting this in the front? I thought it would be best to have some provisions for the way there.”

“You brought lunch? Can’t we just buy it?”

“Look, if you want to complain about everything, at least give me a hand packing up while you do it, would you?” Aziraphale sighed, gripping the handle of one of the trunks. 

When Crowley groaned Aziraphale added haughtily, “I think we both know who’s a hardier traveler and it has nothing to do with who is sensible enough to bring sandwiches.”

Crowley did not attempt to argue and set to work loading the luggage into his newly augmented car. As a number of more or less embarrassing daguerreotypes and photographs could corroborate, there was almost nothing Crowley was not willing to endure for the sake of style, but he was much more reluctant to cede any kind of comfort for non-aesthetic purposes. Angels, of course, are taught to bear discomfort with divine grace and as little grumbling as they can manage.

When the car was loaded, about an hour after the intended departure, Aziraphale protested that it would be useless to set off now without having breakfast[16], and that in fact they were going to save time by delaying their trip until they’d been fed, since they wouldn’t have to stop along the way.

Crowley was not terribly convinced by this logic, but he was happy to take the time to drive his overburdened car to the nearest cafe for some toast and preserves and quiet conversation. The cafe had been bought by a Lancashire family after the end of the war, and did its business in a building that had hosted by turns a prosperous milliner, a purveyor of taxidermied game birds, and a gunsmith who had suffered irrevocably from the decline of duelling.

“I wish we could listen to music inside your car,” Aziraphale said, reaching for the butter. “It would be so pleasant, and it might distract me a little from the threat of your outrageous driving.” He offered the butter knife to Crowley.

“OK, I promise that when they make cars with little radios in them, I will toss out mine and get a new one,” Crowley said. He added, against his better judgment, “Maybe then you’ll be happy to drive around more with me.”

Aziraphale paused with his buttered toast halfway to his mouth. “That’s not fair, Crowley. I’m about to go on a long drive now.” 

Something in that phrase, or perhaps the  _with you_ left out of it, made Crowley very keen to examine the pot of marmalade for a few moments without speaking. He looked up again when he heard Aziraphale crunching on his toast.

“Sorry, angel,” Crowley said. Then, more confidently, “I’ll try to make sure it’s not too much fun of a ride.”

Aziraphale smiled softly and refilled Crowley’s tea by way of an answer.

They finished breakfast, paid, and climbed into the car with minimal rearrangement of luggage and limbs. The crumpled hatbox and the tiffins of lunch were sitting in the front between them, smelling faintly of pickles.

“Oh by the way,” Crowley began as he started the car, “I’m supposed to be working, so if while we’re driving or stopping for lunch you see someone being a complete arse, remember it and I’ll tell the basement office I’m responsible.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Well I’ll definitely let you know if I see someone driving anywhere  _ near _ as poorly as you are.”

Crowley gave a bark that was not quite a laugh. “Oh don’t worry, I’ll remember those buggers myself.”

They had accompanied each other on long journeys many times before, though not primarily for recreational purposes. It used to take much more time to travel from place to place, and an angel or a demon living on earth could not be expected to report back as frequently as they did now[17] . Before motorcars, before steam engines, before the earth’s inhabitants knew how small a world they lived in, Aziraphale and Crowley spent many days guiding camels to sources of water through swirls of dust or shivering atop packhorses in the midst of gathering winter storms. 

The world was far more comfortable now, with cushioned seats and sandwiches, watching gentle hillsides sliding by. The hard journeys of an earlier Earth would be difficult to return to, with all their highwaymen and biting flies and roads that sometimes proved more theoretical than actual. However, memory, even the memory of eternal beings, has a way of hiding the biting flies under the cover of nostalgia. During the half day it took to drive north to Cumbria, Aziraphale and Crowley talked mostly of these previous journeys, and their conversation lingered on the pleasant parts of the vaster, slower world that had once been their own.

Footnotes

12Aziraphale had taken some precautionary measures against customers seeking Christmas gifts. He’d dimmed the lights in the evenings when everyone else was turning on their gas lamps, neglected to clear the snowdrifts from the front of his property, and resisted the urge to adorn the windows with so much as a scrap of tinsel. [ return to text ]

13 One of these fellows grew up to be a prolific, if lackluster, writer of weird tales, and his first published collection featured a story called “The Disappearing Bookseller”. A. Z. Fell and Co. briefly stocked a copy.  [ return to text ]

14 There were several reasons for this. One is that immortal beings have simply too much future ahead of them to speculate on the whole thing with any hope of accuracy. Of course the hosts and the hordes are alike aware that the future may be summarily cancelled, or it may be stretched grotesquely up and over the brink of time until it nearly breaks. The department heads of Heaven and Hell do not customarily share which it will be with low-ranking employees. [ return to text ]

15 Crowley hated exercise, though he was occasionally seized with a strong desire to run for a very long time in the dead of night. Aziraphale, on the other hand, had been extremely fond of the Aztec game of tlachtli, which he had picked up on a business conference with Central American angels around 700 BC, though he hadn’t found any sport since that he enjoyed half so much. Still, he was able to summon sufficient enthusiasm for quoits, lawn darts, and bowling, which were the sort of games Crowley approved of as excuses to stand around looking bored while drinking heavily and throwing things.  [ return to text ]

16 He had already eaten two softboiled eggs and half a pear, but this didn’t count.  [ return to text ]

17 The purely bureaucratic requirements of the job had also increased over the years as Heaven and Hell had taken inspiration from the ideas of humans. The paperwork, for one, had gotten much more substantial following the invention of paper.  [ return to text ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this work, and look out for updates next Thursday.


	4. Moving In

The western sky was still adorned with the gilt of sunset when they arrived at the house, just southeast of Ambleside. Compared to the lake beside it, the house itself was nothing particularly beautiful.[18] It was not quite rectangular, but the arrangement and proximity of the surrounding trees made it difficult to tell exactly how its geometry differed. The exterior was painted white, and the roof and shutters were lacquered with thick moss. In the still evening the only sign of movement nearby was a modest waterfall several feet from the house, overgrown with primroses.

“Not exceptionally interesting-looking, but I didn’t have a lot of time up here and had to miracle one of these places so it wouldn’t be torn down or turned into an inn,” Crowley said, climbing out of the car. “Hope it’s alright if I compromised a few architectural niceties for the lake view.”

“I think it’ll do very well,” Aziraphale said. He gave Crowley a smile that he normally reserved for patisserie display cases. “I wasn’t expecting a waterfall.”

“Was that ever a letdown after Eden,” Crowley leaned back on the front of the car for a moment. “I mean, everything was, but the waterfalls—I was expecting one every 30 feet outside the gates, and now they’re rare enough to be bloody tourist attractions.”

Aziraphale nodded, no longer smiling. The mention of Eden always made his heart clench and his stomach pitch. It was silly—it had been thousands of years, and he had long known, perhaps as soon as he’d left, that he would never see it again. The nostalgia that persisted was still oddly strong, oddly physical. It was like the awareness of angel wings tucked in a dimension out of view that nonetheless continued to twitch and flutter, and sometimes to itch very badly.

Aziraphale blinked to clear the reverie. “Crowley, come give me a hand with the trunks. We can look around the waterfall and all that after my luggage is unpacked.”

“So, at midnight then?” Crowley asked with provocative mildness. 

“I still don’t think my things are really that excessive—”

Aziraphale couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes behind his dark glasses, but the look he gave was sufficiently conveyed by the rest of his face to stop the angel from finishing his sentence.

Up the green gravel path, at the door, there was a piece of paper hung from the knob with a bit of twine.

“What the—” Crowley started, but Aziraphale had already grabbed the paper with his free hand and began to read it aloud.

_Fellow travelers,_

_There’s something unnatural in here._

_If you’d like to look around, take care you’re not alone, and try not to linger after sunset.[19] _

“Well, I’d say your enchantment worked,” Aziraphale said, laughing and hitching up the slipping trunk he was carrying with his other arm. “I just hope no one decides to go ghost-hunting.”

Crowley sighed and rooted in his coat for the key to the door. “People aren’t afraid of the occult anymore. Used to be if you fancied a place you could just say ‘oh this orchard’s infested with devils, terribly sorry, best avoid it,’ and not a soul would come in and poke around while you took all the best plums. Didn’t even need miracles.”

“Oh I just adore plums,” Aziraphale interjected. “You brought the nicest plum jelly to that luncheon in the 1540s, do you remember?” His face suddenly froze. “Wait, was that—”[20]

“Er, angel, I should mention, this place likely needs a bit of cleaning. The miracle started keeping people away before all the stuff inside was auctioned off.” Crowley cut in, right before opening the door. “Shouldn’t be too bad though.”

It was bad.

There were enough cobwebs stretched across the windows to pass for poorly-tatted lace curtains. Dust coated everything in sight, and presumably much more out of it. A minute’s exploration revealed a large unrepaired hole in the roof over the drawing room where an enormous tree branch had fallen during a storm. The floorboards below it had begun to warp from rain.

“And you thought I was being ridiculous for packing that feather duster,” Aziraphale said coolly. “Admit it, you were wrong.”

“Not till Hell freezes over I won’t.[21] Sorry it’s a bit dingier than I remember, though.”

They decided to prioritize the rooms they were likely to use, and restoring those to some level of habitability took several hours. They chased field mice out of the moulding, evicted a flock of pigeons from the kitchen cupboards, and shooed away spiders that had grown complacent and large in the recesses. Aziraphale decided to use up a few miracles to make the cleanup after the pigeons and mice minimally disgusting. Crowley burned a week’s worth of miracles on the bathroom tile.

There were better discoveries as well. One room was filled with dozens of undamaged oil paintings. Another held a grand piano[22] and a chaise-lounge. There was even a wine cellar with three promising bottles still unopened. And there were so many rooms. Crowley joked that there was enough space to give each of the angel’s pieces of luggage two bedchambers to themselves. Aziraphale and his retinue of trunks, tiffins, and bags flooded the furthest bedroom of the south wing, while Crowley took possession of the room at the northernmost end of the house.

Aziraphale was just going back from the kitchen to his bedroom in the south wing to retrieve some silver polish[23] when he heard a horrific scraping noise that made his hair and all of his dimensionally-pocketed wing feathers stand on end. He rushed to see if anything had collapsed.

“What on _earth,_ Crowley—”

Crowley was dragging a bathtub across the wood floor and imagining very hard that its clawed feet were not leaving scuff marks. He stopped when the tub was directly below the hole in the ceiling. 

“There are five other tubs, I think we can spare this one to make sure the floor doesn’t rot away.” Crowley flashed an unconfident smile. “I’m sorry this is such a wreck, angel.” An even less confident smile. “You can tell any ghost-hunters who drop by that it’s all my doing.”

Aziraphale considered, “Well I certainly _will_ , but I think it will be quite livable here soon.” He looked around the drawing room, with its green and gold wallpaper, fine feather-dusted furniture, and incongruous bathtub. “If you hadn’t suggested this we’d still be back in London waiting for assignments. I suppose I should thank you.”

Crowley waved a dismissal. “Think I’m going to turn in, angel. Don’t let me sleep for a year: that’s a real request.”

Aziraphale watched him walk into the northern wing, then made his way to his own room and dug through his trunks for suitable books.[24] When half of his possessions had been disgorged and none of the books he’d unearthed seemed compelling, he sat heavily on the bed and turned off the lamp. Perhaps it was the effort of moving all his luggage several times over, or chasing mice out of doors, or some nameless property of travel itself, but Aziraphale felt decidedly _tired_. 

He lowered himself gingerly across the bed as though extending a drawbridge. The pillow was soft and only slightly mildewed. There was a low, gentle hum from the insects outside and he could hear the cheerful trickle of the waterfall. It was very dark.The ceiling seemed to get closer and closer until Aziraphale thought he could feel it like a weighted caress on his face.

It was only when he sat bolt upright at dawn and scrabbled for his pocket watch that he realized he’d fallen asleep.

Footnotes

18 It was also too dull for charm, too dilapidated for elegance, and too small and brightly-painted for sublimity. Thus the house was forced into that vaguest of aesthetic purgatories, the picturesque.  [ return to text ]

19 The message looked like it had been written by a hand that was shaking from an inexplicable-yet-alluring horror. This was something Aziraphale noticed immediately, both from his millennia-old study of manuscripts and his more recent habit of reading novels in which important messages were exclusively written by hands shaking from inexplicable-yet-alluring horrors.  [ return to text ]

20 It was.  [ return to text ]

21 Hell had frozen five times before due to mechanical failure. It is a common misconception that Hell is hot because of inherent demoniacal properties. In fact, Hell is artificially heated, to the dissatisfaction of residents and staff alike, and at considerable expense.  [ return to text ]

22 Both Crowley and Aziraphale had learned how to play, and Aziraphale was also reasonably proficient at the violin and the Chinese two-stringed fiddle. Crowley was the slightly better pianist, but professionally he stuck to the kazoo and an accordion he had carefully coaxed out of tune over decades.  [ return to text ]

23 This had been included among “the essentials” since Aziraphale reckoned that having silver polish at hand was an excellent reason to obtain silver trinkets in need of polishing. He did not intend to leave Cumbria without a few souvenirs to round out his curio cabinet.  [ return to text ]

24 Aziraphale typically spent all night reading in an armchair, and had no pillowcases or pajamas, though he did possess an inordinately fluffy bathrobe and several pairs of very well-cushioned slippers. [ return to text ]


	5. Such Liberty Was Mine

Heaven, Aziraphale thought, could take a few landscaping pointers from the valley of Great Langdale. Beams of divine light had their charms, but they couldn’t compare to a vast gentle lake and a patchwork of green dotted with ancient crags and threaded through with wildflowers. Aziraphale had seen many opulent churches around the world, but even the loveliest stained glass rosette didn’t outshine the view of Lake Windermere that was now the backdrop of his morning tea.[25]

He and Crowley had settled into the old house and their new routine. Aziraphale would put away his books at five o’clock every morning, walk to the adjacent room with the bay window to watch the sunrise, then set about making one of the four breakfast dishes he had learned how to cook in six-thousand-odd years. He usually had ample time to walk to the inn in Ambleside, pick up a newspaper, and read most of it before Crowley woke up panicking about what year it was. [26]

At breakfast Aziraphale would chatter about news he’d read (“The Dutch have built themselves an airline now, can you imagine?”) and outline briefly how he would be occupied for most of the day, with exceptions for lunch and planned excursions. He was anxious about imposing on Crowley’s time and felt that he owed the demon too much already for their holiday.[27] Crowley would down half a pot of tea to wake up properly, then likewise explain why he would be busy with compelling and vague reasons.

Angels are good at spending free time profitably. Sloth, after all, is a cardinal sin, and Heaven takes a notoriously dim view of idle hands.[28] There were a number of attractive walking paths within easy distance of the house, and Aziraphale spent a good amount of time strolling back and forth to Ambleside and around Lake Windermere. On occasion he summoned greater ambulatory ambition and set off for Coniston or Grizedale or one of the larger waterfalls.

Aside from inquiring about the most promising restaurants, Aziraphale largely avoided talking to the tourists and shopkeepers he encountered during his strolls. He was never much in favor of small talk, and he always felt particularly put off by conversation with humans so soon after participating in one of their wars. There was something deeply disconcerting about the switch from orders shouted on blood-soaked battlefields to pleasant remarks about the humidity. Although the angel was only too happy to trade mustard gas for merriment, it unnerved him to see other people doing the same thing. Aziraphale suspected that many of the war’s survivors had that feeling too, that perhaps they suffered from it much more than he did. He was polite and warm when he encountered people, but he often found himself using miracles to draw the attention of would-be interlocutors to other things, beautiful and distracting and far away.

Lunch was Crowley’s responsibility, as breakfast was Aziraphale’s, through mutual unspoken agreement. Crowley had never properly learned how to cook anything,[29] but he did seem to take inordinate joy in peeling the skin off of vegetables. In front of the kitchen window, he’d repotted a small collection of herbs taken from the overgrown and underwatered garden. Aziraphale doubted whether the little plants could be reanimated, but under Crowley’s unblinking eye, and in full view of his enthusiastic knife, they grew to be both robust and delicious. Rosemary was rejuvenated, fennel fortified, and sage salvaged from the brink of dessication.

After lunch they would occasionally spend an hour or so putting the house in order, or at least giving a cursory check to make sure no more of the roof had caved in. Neither had made any attempt to patch the hole over the sitting room, so when it rained they had to empty water from the bathtub sitting in the center of the floor. [30]

In the warm and golden hours of the afternoon Aziraphale liked to take some fruit or hard-boiled eggs and a book to one or another of the scenic crevices and rifts in the valley. Upon reaching an impressive view, he would proceed to ignore everything around him and read steadily until sunset. Although he’d filled an entire steamer trunk with books, he soon finished off everything he had brought with him, and sent for more through a post office box he’d arranged in town.

Aziraphale liked to keep abreast of the world of literature, and among his older books he bought copies of the newly released  _ The Age of Innocence _ ,  _ This Side of Paradise _ , and a collection of poems by Wilfred Owen. All of these made him sad, but he figured it was better to be sad against a pleasant scene than a plain one. He also ordered a copy of  _ Women in Love  _ from America, taking care to wrap it in plain paper to conceal it from Crowley, who always teased him horribly whenever he saw the angel reading something that human society had decided was scandalous.[31]

He was happily entertained with his new books and delicious lunches and lakeside strolls, but a normally very quiet part of him, emboldened by the calm, encouraged his curiosity about what Crowley was doing all day. He had taken for granted that Crowley was occupied by fiendish business during their many years of residing in London, even as their visits became more and more frequent and the justifications for them less and less professional in nature. Now that they were technically living in the same mouldering house, he began to wonder at desultory hours what Crowley might be up to. Aziraphale had the distinct sense—or perhaps hope—that if on any day at breakfast he said that he was not going to be busy, all of Crowley’s vague and compelling plans would evaporate like the morning mist over the lake outside their door.

Days lengthened and several weeks went by. The house lost its grime and its remaining cobwebs with sporadic effort and occasional divine intervention. The once-neglected vegetable plots grew ever more verdant and terrified. Aziraphale and Crowley’s nearest neighbors, who never managed to catch sight of angel nor demon, became steadily convinced that the shiny car parked out front was being lovingly maintained by the ghosts clearly haunting the place.

Spring yielded haltingly to summer in much the same way that Aziraphale’s proclamations of so-much-to-do were gradually transmuted into invitations for a stroll into town or a few hours sitting by the lake. Crowley accepted all of them, as the very quiet part of Aziraphale had known he would. 

On a bright day in June they decided to visit Grasmere, where the poet Wordsworth had lived and written more than a hundred years before. Crowley prevailed on Aziraphale to take the car. Although Aziraphale had been looking forward to the walk, he relented for the sake of keeping their lunch somewhat cool (they’d packed cheese sandwiches and a potato salad that Crowley had pointedly diced in front of an ailing pot of marjoram). 

“It is a rather poetic sort of place, as these things go,” Aziraphale remarked, unwrapping a cheese sandwich and balancing his copy of  _ The Collected Works of William Wordsworth _ on his knee. They had managed to find a patch of grass suitable for an outdoor lunch: neither too damp nor too sunny, and well-sheltered by a hawthorn tree.from the tourists in skimmer hats milling around the doors of Dove Cottage

“It’s nice, although I don’t understand why you needed to bring the book,” Crowley said. “You hardly seem to enjoy these places when you’ve got a book with you.”

“What if being here means I’m enjoying  _ the book _ more? As long as I’m enjoying something, I don’t see what the problem is.” Aziraphale was flicking through the pages.

Crowley sighed and extended one arm so that the tips of his fingers breached the shade and touched sunlight. There was a minute of quiet, and then Aziraphale began to read under his breath, a habit that Crowley found so endearing he was obliged to be irritated by it.

The angel read “ _ I thought of clouds/That sail on winds; of breezes that delight/To play on water _ —”

“Oh come on, let me enjoy the afternoon without commentary.” Crowley flicked Aziraphale an admonishing dandelion, and he caught it in midair without looking up from the page.

“... _ Sunbeams, Shadows, Butterflies and Birds/Angels and winged Creatures that are Lords” _

“Aziraphale,” Crowley sat up and put his hand lightly on the book. “Please, cut the narration.”

“I’m just getting to the description of where we are right now!”

“I think I’d rather experience the real thing.”

“But don’t you find 'the real thing' so much more interesting when you can see how other people looked at it? Especially if they wrote famous nine-page poems about it?” Aziraphale smiled slightly to let Crowley know he was joking, just a little bit, about the last part.

Crowley said, “You know, for someone who avoids people so much you sure do like to know all about their intimate thoughts.” He reflected, slowly pulling apart a blade of grass, “I guess the world was duller before there were humans in it  _ interpreting things. _ But don’tya ever want to see it just for yourself?”

“Well that’s a bit possessive,” Aziraphale said. “But fine, I’ll read silently.”

Crowley stabbed a piece of potato with his fork and waved it at Aziraphale. “As your old Wordsworth would say, ‘ _ bring no books, for this one day we’ll give to idleness _ .’” He popped the potato into his mouth looking impossibly smug.

Aziraphale almost dropped his sandwich into the grass.

“Do you mean to tell me you've been reading my books looking for little snippets to tell me to—to stop reading my books? That's devilish even for you.”

Crowley shrugged and stabbed a spring onion with barely concealed triumph.

“I should read the whole book aloud just for that,” Aziraphale said, too impressed to be angry. “You  _ fiend _ .”

“Oh angel, flattery will not make me give you my last cheese sandwich.”

Footnotes

25 Though he would never admit it to anyone, least of all Crowley, Aziraphale was secretly disappointed that as far as he knew he’d only been represented in stained glass once, and quite poorly at that. The window in question had been destroyed in a fire in 1370, a fact which was entirely irrelevant to its amateurish depiction of the Angel of the Eastern Gate.  [ return to text ]

26 He did not trust alarm clocks to wake him up. More to the point, he didn’t trust Aziraphale’s intention to save him half of breakfast to prevail over Aziraphale’s desire to eat both halves of breakfast.  [ return to text ]

27 Aziraphale had convinced himself, not very happily, that heaven’s agents were meant to be solitary creatures, and that all those old paintings with a hundred angels to a cloud were a load of nonsense.  [ return to text ]

28 This does not mean that Hell approves of laziness, at least not among its employees. Crowley had been quite disappointed to find out that demons are expected to be industrious in their promotion of indolence. He was further disappointed to find that encouraging greed among humans did not translate into a lenient attitude about his more questionable expense reports in the infernal accounting department.  [ return to text ]

29 He expected the results to taste good no matter how poorly they were prepared, so they always did. Demonic powers and stubbornness do not tend to produce a state of affairs conducive to education.  [ return to text ]

30 In truth, neither was very anxious to move it. Aziraphale felt a little thrill when there was exactly one piece of furniture out of place, as though he was conducting well-mannered subterfuge. Crowley had discovered that the bathtub was a perfect place to sit when one wanted to drink a bottle of wine and look at the stars through a hole in the ceiling.  [ return to text ]

31 Thoroughly flustered, Aziraphale would either protest that he had yet to read something more outlandish than some of the Greek comedies the two of them had watched together several thousand years ago, or he would begin a long speech on The Immutability of Art in the hope that Crowley would get bored.  [ return to text ]


	6. Angels in Egg Tempera

It was rainy in the middle of June. Warm droplets fell in sheets of silver and landed everywhere but the roof of one particular car. All around the shore of Lake Windermere, visitors swore they saw flickering lamplights bobbing above the house with the beautiful garden and the moss-stricken walls. It was no longer fashionable to believe in ghosts, of course, but it seemed no longer tenable to discount them either.[32]

Inside the house, an angel sat on a moth-eaten but quite plush sofa with an enormous book of theology balanced on his lap. Aziraphale’s scalding mug of oolong[33] lapsed into tepidness while he read, though when he finally remembered to pick it up it began to steam with as much vigor as before. There was a spatter of juice on the table where Crowley had just eviscerated an orange. While Aziraphale turned pages and let his tea grow cold again, Crowley dropped a slice of citrus in his own toddy, which was essentially a cup full of brandy wearing a few drops of tea for the sake of propriety.

“You know, I reckon I could learn to enjoy being a local legend,” Crowley said. “Lends a certain glamor to a gloomy day.”

Through the sitting room windows, rain clouds sickened to storms, grey-green and feverish in the early evening. Water fell through the hole in the ceiling into the claw-footed bathtub like a stark fountain anticipating Brutalism 30 years early.

“Hm? Ah yes, being cursed by the forces of darkness certainly discourages visitors,” Aziraphale said, reaching for the sugar bowl lid. As he stirred in a cube thoughtfully, he asked, “I don’t suppose my holy powers could prevail on you to enchant my bookshop like this, could they?”

“You could perfectly well do it yourself, if you could live with the knowledge you invoked the good old holy powers to scare people off buying antique books” Crowley said, twirling his hat with one finger. “Seem to recall there’s a rule about what sort of triviality thou shalt leave thine Employer out of.”

“That’s about taking Her name in vain. Nothing in the good book or the personnel handbook actually specifies the proper jurisdiction of angelic abilities,”[34] Aziraphale said, closing his volume after reflexively placing a ribbon down the center of his page. He shook his head. “It’s true, though, I couldn’t do it.”

“Wish you’d exempted my car from your _proper jurisdiction ,_ ” Crowley muttered into his teacup. 

“And besides,” Aziraphale said, forgetting he’d supposedly talked himself out of it already, “it wouldn’t do to deprive the neighboring shops of their customers.”[35]

Crowley snorted. “Oh of course. Wouldn’t want to interrupt the brisk business of the pawnbroker on the first floor or the bloke who sells all the smutty books next door. Unangelic, that.” He had rearranged himself perpendicularly to his chair, stretching his legs so his shoes touched the arm of the sofa.

Aziraphale gave a reprimanding look and sipped his tea with overt delicacy. “Far be it from me to encourage anything untoward, but if the er, other shops help to draw a few grubby fingers away from my folios, I’m inclined to be radically tolerant.” He dislodged Crowley’s feet from the sofa with the smack of a righteous cushion.

“Don’t let your bosses catch you saying that,” Crowley said. He kept his face blank as one foot crept back up the upholstery.

Aziraphale sighed. He was unusually intent as he selected a second sugar cube, as if by picking the right one he could dissolve it and all his troubles together in hot tea.

“I should probably send Upstairs a report soon. Let them know all demonic influences are in check and so forth.” Aziraphale looked at Crowley and scowled. “Or at least they would be if they would _get their devilish shoes off the sofa.”_

“Funny, I don’t feel too checked,” Crowley said, though he did retract his leg. “Of course for my part I’ve been letting an angel run wild, putting pleasant thoughts in people’s heads so he doesn’t have to talk to them and paying too generously for dinner.”

Aziraphale’s blush was tempered by the green light from the storm outside. Crowley could see that his eyes were flickering down to the book he’d closed, always a sure sign that he wanted to continue reading but was too polite to say so. 

“Well, I’m going to have a look at the gallery, enjoy your theology.” He clambered out of the chair and snatched a few more orange slices.

“Oh I will, my dear,” Aziraphale picked up _New Christian Thought: The Re-Creation of Heaven_ and opened it to the marked page. “And really, this is quite light reading as these things go.”[36]

Crowley rolled his eyes and took his heavily-fortified tea to the gallery two rooms down.

The narrow hallway opened into a dark chamber covered in old frames enclosing oil paint, watercolors, one or two egg temperas, and dust (Crowley snapped once and the dust collected itself sheepishly into one corner of the room). Unlike in the rest of the house, where the walls were either cream-white or festooned with lively wallpaper, the gallery’s walls were painted a rich green. The paintings seemed to emerge from their background like brightly colored creatures walking out of a dense forest into the daylight.

Crowley surveyed the gallery, looking for familiar faces, but he did not linger long before returning to the sitting room. Aziraphale had shifted to the other end of the sofa and removed his shoes to sit more comfortably with his legs curled under him. 

“Some pretty good ones in there I think you’ll want to see,” Crowley said from the doorframe. “Got a heap of older stuff, so naturally there’s loads of your lot stomping around in bare feet being righteous. Want to look?”

Aziraphale hesitated, his ribbon bookmark hovering in midair. “How many _Annunciations_ are there?”

“Three.”

“Ok, I’ll be right up.”

Crowley grinned with satisfaction and waited as Aziraphale scrambled for his shoes. Ever since wealthy people had begun hanging representations of Biblical events on their walls, Crowley and Aziraphale had played an informal game ranking these artistic depictions against their own memories of what had transpired. The Annunciation was a particular favorite because it was usually one of the least faithful.[37] Medieval woodcut prints were surefire entertainment, too—Crowley appreciated the ones of himself on the fateful apple tree, especially the sort in which the artist endowed him with a squashed lion’s face and wildly off the mark Latin speech.

None of the paintings in the gallery scored above a 4 out of 10 on the Scale of Gabriel Likeness, although Aziraphale joked about suggesting the fetching multicolored wingfeathers on one memorable Mannerist version to his supervisor.

In the visual center of the walls and the chronological center of the pictures’ timeline was an enormous painting of Saint George stamping virtuously upon a rather flaccid dragon.

“What a twit he was,” Crowley remarked. “I still believe your people gave him a pass because he looked the part in paintings and such.”

“There was a rumor about him at the office, you know,” Aziraphale said. He opened his mouth to explain, then something seemed to diffuse across his face and he pursed his lips abruptly and looked away. Crowley, who knew the signs of someone just a few encouragements away from saying something they probably shouldn’t, was delighted.

“Oh come on angel, now you’ve got to tell me.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat in recognition of defeat. “Oh dear—this was years ago.”

“Well?”

The angel took a deep breath and applied his most rigid smile. “At some point there was a rumor among the lower ranks of Heaven that there were, well, _warm feelings_ between Saint George and the Archangel Michael.” He paused. “And perhaps other sources of warmth as well.” 

Crowley lowered his sunglasses to look at Aziraphale and blinked for the first time in days.“That’s a pretty scandalous piece of office gossip for the keepers of Heaven, don’t you think?”[38]

Aziraphale’s face was a violent shade of pink, and his hands were beginning to flutter against his jacket. “The, ah, the joke from the other Principalities was, well, it really wouldn’t do to have people think sleeping with an angel might get you a spot in Heaven.”

Crowley felt his jaw unhinge involuntarily as his mind prepared to replay the sounds of Aziraphale saying “sleeping with an angel” over and over until the last stars in the universe guttered out.

“Oh don’t look so shocked, I doubt there was a shred of truth to any of it” Aziraphale said. “Besides, I can’t even imagine what sordid dreck passes for collegial conversation Downstairs.”

Crowley reassembled his slack features into something like a smirk. “I suppose if people thought they could buy their way into Heaven with indulgences, the logical next step is—”

“ _Crowley!_ ”

“Sorry.”

They stared at anything but each other for a few moments, and would have listened to the sound of the rain if the rain hadn’t stopped half an hour ago. Crowley could see dozens of painted angels in the pictures around him, and he felt like every one of them was angry at him behind their dopey, cherubic smiles. But it was probably just the one.

“It’s stopped raining, let’s go somewhere,” Aziraphale said at last. “I think I’d quite like a drink.”

Footnotes

32 One fanciful and prolix lady wrote to her aunt with equal alarm and fascination about the spirits she was confident lurked at the lake’s edge. “Were I an old fashioned sort I would say it was an angel weeping for a lost soul, and were I a romantic I would say it was a demon spiriting that lost soul away. But it can be none but the dead. Who but they would stand on rooftops carrying candles rain cannot extinguish? Who else perform such a wretched vigil night after night after night?”  [ return to text ]

33 Strictly speaking, there was no oolong tea within a reasonable radius. They’d bought a tin of indifferent earl grey and when Aziraphale had felt a particular fancy for oolong, the tea leaves found their oxidation reversing spontaneously until they were rich and fragrant and precisely what the angel had been wishing to drink.  [ return to text ]

34 There are 49 tedious pages and over 700 even duller endnotes devoted to the correct exercise of fiendish abilities in Hell’s equivalent handbook, but not a single demon has read it in its entirety except for one Anthony J. Crowley, who used the infernal employment manual as an effective soporific during a bout of insomnia in the 4th Century BC.  [ return to text ]

35 It often took Aziraphale a long time to talk himself out of things, and usually much longer when Crowley was around. Crowley did not so much as talk Aziraphale into bad ideas as he provided convenient cover for whatever bad ideas Aziraphale had decided to indulge already.  [ return to text ]

36 “Why are you so determined to fill eternity with reading the driest stuff imaginable when you could be doing anything else?” Crowley asked Aziraphale one afternoon, when he’d come over to the bookshop and received a rather distracted welcome. Without looking up from his lovingly restored religious text, Aziraphale gave as wily a smile as angelic faces can be expected to compose. “Oh my dear,” he said airily, “If you don’t read theology how in Heaven do you expect to know what people are saying about you?”  [ return to text ]

37 Neither was present for it, but during the heavenly debriefing afterward Aziraphale had received an exhaustive account and Gabriel hadn’t shut up about it for the next three hundred years.  [ return to text ]

38 Crowley was very interested in Aziraphale’s reaction, but extremely uninterested in the rumor itself. Versions of that same rumor involving various permutations of saints and archangels are repeated in Hell’s conference rooms every year with more or less crudity.  [ return to text ]


	7. Raindrops and Falling Stars

It was crowded at _ The Mortal Man _ , the Ambleside inn where Aziraphale received new books from London, terse notes from Heaven, and repeated orders of rhubarb fool from the kitchen staff. Aziraphale and Crowley arrived at the inn at the moment when a crowd that was avoiding the rain had yet to leave, and a fresh batch of carousers who had set out when the rain stopped were newly arrived. Much retrieving of umbrellas and shuffling of boots elapsed before they found space at one of the cramped tables against the wall. Aziraphale ordered two brown ales and wiped the surface of the table with a handkerchief he had obtained sometime before Queen Victoria’s accession.

He and Crowley had spoken normally during the car ride over, with perhaps an excessive joviality. Now, with drinks in front of them and the conversation of others coloring in the background, they went silent for a minute. Crowley picked at the sleeve of his jacket in between sips of beer. Aziraphale drank his ale very quickly and requested a second glass with a smile as sunny as it was insincere.[39]

“So,” Crowley began, “I owe you a piece of scandal from Hell, I think.”

Aziraphale raised accusatory eyebrows at him over the foam of his drink. “Hardly,” he said, and folded his fingers neatly together, like a dainty, well-mannered prayer. “I don’t think I’d like to know what even  _ constitutes _ professional indiscretions with your crowd.[40] Anyway, I rather thought we had abandoned the subject.”

“What if it’s my professional indiscretion?” Crowley asked, with heavy sarcasm he fully intended to duck and hide under if Aziraphale got angry or flustered. 

Aziraphale did neither of those things. Instead he set his drink on the table and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Well, speaking from strictly from within my purview as an angel, I must listen to the wayward and offer them some kind of absolution, mustn't I?” 

“Oh, not sure about absolution, angel,” Crowley said, relieved. “But though my sins are unforgivable, I will accept divine mercy in the form of more drinks.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, but curiosity glittered in them behind his great show of annoyance.

“You read The Divine Comedy, right?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale smiled. “I recall vividly Sandalphon’s little tirade about how  _ Paradiso _ should have been more popular than  _ Inferno _ . It’s always interesting to see how the office looks in fiction.”

“Well,” Crowley said, looping one finger around the rim of his glass to produce a tiny humming sound, “I may have let slip to Hell’s upper management something that implied it was not completely fictional.”

“You told your superiors that Dante had really been poking around in Hell?” Aziraphale asked. “Did they believe it?”

“The Dark Council had a field day, they were so terrified this pious little poet snuck in and was going around and publishing trade secrets in  _ terza rima _ .”

“Didn’t any of them read it? Couldn’t they tell it was inaccurate?”

“You know demons don’t read.”

“Did they find out it was you?” Aziraphale whispered, suddenly conspiratorial.

“No, never. Mind, I won’t say it was a flawless plan—they did tighten up security quite a bit after. Never really worried about anyone trying to get in before.” Crowley drained his drink. “Bloody 14th Century.”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure whether to look impressed or reproving, and settled for congenial. “Well now that you’ve confessed to these truly grievous sins against, er, Hell’s managerial staff, what do you want to drink?” he asked.

They talked their way through several more rounds of drinks and got lost in a meandering discussion about moral luck and free will. Crowley tried to illustrate one of his points with the contents of a basket of chips, but the philosophical validity of his argument was compromised by Azirphale eating Figure A with a sprinkle of malt vinegar. Right as they were putting on their coats to go, the barkeep waved Aziraphale over.

“Mr. Fell, forgot to mention, there’s another letter for you. Same company as last, it looks like.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale smiled his least sincere and most overwhelmingly sunny smile of the night. “Wonderful, Harry, I’ll be sure to pick it up.”

“Got a little postcard from upstairs, have you?” Crowley asked when Aziraphale came back holding a tawny envelope. Crowley was quickly losing the battle to avoid hissing while he spoke.

“Yes—my dear, are you sure you can drive?”[41] Aziraphale tucked the letter reflexively into the interior pocket of his coat. He was feeling light-headed himself, and not inclined to levitate the car miraculously back home.

Crowley’s answer began as words and ended as hiccuping.   


“Right, let’s walk, and you can get the car in the morning.” 

The walk home was dark and filled with trees. The music and conversation from the town gave way to the soft buzzing of far too many insects. As they approached the lakeshore the walls of the house seemed to fluoresce like strange mushrooms, and Azirapahle could see the tiny sparkle of the waterfall. The moon’s reflection in the lake was warped like inexpertly gathered satin, puckering in the dark water.

Crowley gave the key a theatrical flourish before turning it in the lock to hide his unsteadiness. There was a column of moonlight from the sitting room ceiling giving the interior a greyish glow. 

“I had better go and answer my letter,” Aziraphale said, patting his coat.

Crowley balked. “Surely they’re not pacing around on the clouds waiting for an answer tonight?”

“I just want to know what it says,” Aziraphale said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “I am an angel, after all, I can’t just go about drinking with demons when there’s”—he waved a tipsy arm indistinctly—”celestial business to attend to.”

“S’pose not,” Crowley said. He did not press for more, and crossed instead to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of wine. Perhaps it was the drink or the dim light, but Aziraphale could have sworn he saw the dill plant on the counter draw back at Crowley’s approach.

The angel tried to steady himself as he walked down the hall to the south wing.[42] Aziraphale refrained from opening the letter until he’d sat down in the chair in front of his desk, smoothed his coat, retrieved pen and paper for an answer, and taken several deep and unnecessary breaths. With a slice of the letter-opener, he could see the note from Heaven was typed, which probably meant it originated from the higher end of higher authorities, the kind who had cherubim to type up memos for them.[43]

_ To: Principality Aziraphale _

_ Reports of demonic activity southeast of Ambleside. As the closest stationed agent, please investigate the source and mitigate all diabolical influence. Godspeed.  _ — _ Archangel Michael _

Aziraphale reread the missive several times before he realized he was chewing on his bottom lip and on the verge of drawing blood. He felt unnerved, as though Michael had heard him talking about the centuries-old rumor and had sent a little reminder of Aziraphale’s own indiscretions like a bolt of lightning from above to shock him back into something that resembled professionalism.

The fountain pen on the desk helpfully refilled itself with ink and stood at attention as Aziraphale began mentally composing a reply that was suitably affirming and vague. Aziraphale did not like lying, and whether through excessive faith in his own integrity or deeper self-deception, he was under the impression he had never seriously lied in his life after the one tremendous lie he had told to God at the world’s beginning. Really, that ought to be enough for a lifetime, especially for an angel. 

However little he liked lying, there were many things Aziraphale did not wish various parties in his life to know, so he often found himself maneuvering carefully to avoid making contact with matters of fact. His reply to Michael was warm and effusive and eloquently handwritten, and contained little of substance and almost nothing of truth. But there were no outright and demonstrable falsehoods, so Aziraphale was able to rest on the seductive and infinitely comfortable bed of moral superiority. Reassured, he opened the window to catch the night breeze. Aziraphale’s mind slackened, and he admired the way the stars twinkling outside mirrored the dust motes that were waltzing in and out of the light under his desk lamp, one, two, three, one, two, three...

Aziraphale’s head jerked up as he fell sharply out of slumber. He could feel an imprint on his cheek where he’d been resting his face on the desk. The stars outside had shifted, the moon changed positions, and he discovered with dismay that some of his fingers were coated with spilled ink. He washed off the worst of it in the small sink at the corner of his room, watching the blue-black ink run diluted into the drain. After tut-tutting at his pocket watch, he decided to check on Crowley.

There was a sound like the shuffling of papers that grew louder as Aziraphale approached the sitting room at the center of the house. It was a soft fluttering, like birds taking flight. Mystified, Aziraphale jogged a little along the last bit of corridor, and was startled when the tall oak door to the sitting room slammed shut in front of him.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale called at the door. “Did you--are you OK?”

There was a loud crash and that fluttery sound again. Definitely more like birds than paper, Aziraphale decided.

“Fine, fine, you can go back, angel, m’fine,” Crowley’s voice came from the other side of the door.

“May I come in?” 

“Er, bit of an embarrassing sssituation here,” Crowley’s voice was higher in pitch than usual, and the hissing was back and thicker than before.

Aziraphale cleared his throat and said, “Dear boy, with all due respect, I watched you ride horses for thousands of years and it can’t be more embarrassing than that.” 

There was a stifled expletive, then a mechanical click, and the door opened.

Crowley was sitting folded-up in an armchair, holding his sunglasses and squinting hard at a chandelier. At first Aziraphale couldn’t see anything unusual, then as his eyes adjusted he realized exactly one of Crowley’s wings—the left—was fully extended and appeared to have knocked over a lamp.

They stared at each other for a heartbeat and a half before Aziraphale started laughing so hard his entire body crumpled in on itself and he was obliged to sit on the floor and wipe his eyes.

“Sss’not funny,” Crowley whined, tossing his sunglasses onto the coffee table. “I can’t put it back.”

“I am—I am so sorry my dear,” Aziraphale said, choking down his laughter. “What were you trying to do? I suppose you’re too drunk to sober up.”

Crowley made a gesture halfway between a shrug and a wave. “I was jussst—look, I was relaxed, that’sss all. I can’t—it’s jusst out of reach.”[44]

“Come now, Crowley, just one dimension in front of the other,” Aziraphale coaxed, standing up and punching the air in front of him in encouragement.

Everything on Crowley’s face evacuated its normal location and scrunched together as he strained for a few seconds. Nothing happened.

Aziraphale started to pace around the armchair. “Oh dear, that’s not it. See, Crowley, It’s just”—his wings whooshed into neat, well-preened existence—”like that.”

“Not a good desscription,” Crowley said. He closed his eyes, grimacing, and twitched for a moment. The extended wing fluttered, but did not disappear. Crowley threw his head back in frustration. “Oh sod it, I’ll just wait til morning.”

“Perhaps it would help if you stood up?” Aziraphale offered a hand that Crowley didn’t take. He struggled out of the armchair on his own, murmuring sibilant curses.

“On three then?” Aziraphale asked brightly, suppressing a smile with all his heavenly forbearance. “One, two, three!”

Several things happened at once, or rather, in such quick succession that it seemed as though they occurred in the same cluttered instant.

Aziraphale’s wings disappeard, which made him stumble slightly with the redistribution of weight. At the same time, Crowley failed to pocket his left wing out of sight, and instead his other wing burst forth into full corporeality. He tripped and pitched forward, colliding with Aziraphale, and sent the two of them hurtling towards the unsuspecting coffee table. As they fell, one of Crowley’s wings hit the chandelier with an almighty whack. The chandelier broke, and hundreds of ornamental crystals were flying, falling-- 

“STOP!” Aziraphale yelped into the air, and the world froze.

Hovering about three inches above the table, staring up at the ceiling and the hundred suspended shapes glinting in the dim light, Aziraphale felt a rush of gratitude that Heaven couldn’t tell precisely what all of his miracles accomplished. If it was surely understandable to spare himself a broken spine and a face bloodied by shards of chandelier, it was likely less understandable that he was lying on his back in midair, physically threatened by a broken light fixture, and holding an armful of warm, intoxicated demon. 

“Crowley, are you alright?” Aziraphale asked without moving. All around them the chandelier crystals were sparkling softly like manufactured raindrops.

“They look like stars,” Crowley said, delighted and drunk but no longer hissing. He seemed to have been brought to his senses a bit by the fall, and was staring at the suspended crystals behind and above Aziraphale. “Chandelier looks much better like this.”

“I rather think they look like raindrops,” Aziraphale said, trying to ignore Crowley’s weight and tilting his head back to look at the same patch of crystals. “Though really we should repair—”

‘Watch,” Crowley said quietly, and the hovering crystals began to spin in a circle around the room. “See, they look all sparkly, like stars.”

“Stars don’t move that fast.”

“Depends on how old you are and how long you’re watching.”

“It does not—they don’t  _ actually _ move any faster,” said Aziraphale, never one to lose an argument on a technicality. 

“Well, in a relative sense.”

“Stars aren’t transparent, crystals and raindrops are,” Aziraphale insisted.

“You’re bloody impossible, you know that?” Crowley said.

Aziraphale lifted his head to reply, but the combination of the spinning broken crystals and the blood rushing from the top of his head made him too dizzy to speak. He was excruciatingly aware that Crowley was still lying on top of him in midair, that his own arms were clamped on the demon’s shoulders right above the wingfeathers, and that Crowley’s arms were wrapped tightly around his waist. Most excruciating of all, Aziraphale suddenly realized he had no desire to move whatsoever.

They stared at each other as if paralyzed and Aziraphale thought he could feel Crowley’s heart beat against his own.[45] Yellow eyes blazed into blue ones like volcanic fire meeting the ocean: a burst of heat, then a crystalline moment that shatters. It broke like dark glass rent apart in the boiling sea, like the unraveling of an ornate chandelier, like a fracture in the long reticence of centuries.

Crowley’s eyes flicked downwards, just slightly, and Aziraphale could feel the strain on plausible deniability about to snap.

“Crowley, dear, I quite fancy a cup of tea!” Aziraphale said in what he hoped was not a squeak.

“Wot?” Crowley asked. His eyes had gone unfocused.

“I would like to make a cup of tea.” If Aziraphale had avoided squeaks before there was no hope for likewise evading stammers. “It’s drafty in here and you’re very drunk and if you wouldn’t mind climbing off I would very much like to put the kettle on. On the stove, that is. For the tea.” 

“Right, course, tea is—I like tea,” Crowley said, and rolled off of Aziraphale to stand up. The pieces of chandelier lowered themselves to the ground, too slowly to be either raindrops or falling stars. Aziraphale let himself drop and sat on the coffee table for a few seconds, flattening his lapels and adjusting the collar of his shirt.

There was a flicker of feathers and Crowley’s wings finally disappeared. Aziraphale sprang up from the table and walked to the kitchen without a second glance at the broken pieces of lamp and chandelier and his own dignity scattered on the sitting-room floor. 

Footnotes

39 His professional background gave Aziraphale the ability to pour forth genuine and angelic love through smiles and small talk that pained him. It was one of the reasons the staff still liked him, despite his many odd requests and his particularity about the preparation of trifle.  [ return to text ]

40 Kindness, generosity, and optimism are all major code of conduct violations. The lewd act of holding the door open for another demon merits half a year of docked pay.  [ return to text ]

41 Aziraphale was free and indiscriminate with his my-dears while sober, and when he was drunk he was so liberal with them that doors he stumbled into and his own clumsily-prepared cups of cocoa were at risk to being my-deared as well. He had more than once called Crowley “dearest” while truly off his face, but since this was a designation Crowley shared with any food the angel happened to come across in such a state, the demon figured it was just a fluke of impersonal affection.  [ return to text ]

42 He’d started to feel quite silly about how he and Crowley had carefully chosen rooms as far from each other as possible, but he was certainly not going to suggest that they move any close together.  [ return to text ]

43 There had been a telegram system of sorts in Heaven until 1918, but about half of the angels on the operations team were insistent that telegrams were outdated and the other half were still devoted to the old ways of reporting to one’s supervisors by burning a letter in consecrated flames. [ return to text ]

44 Moving wings from one plane of reality to another is nontrivial, but difficult to explain. One school of medieval thought insisted it’s like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. Another likened it to saying the alphabet backwards while writing the alphabet in the correct order. Contemporaneous writings assure us these metaphors have profound but contradictory metaphysical implications. [ return to text ]

45 He could not, and would have been thoroughly embarrassed to realize this was his own imagination. Crowley had accidentally shut down his entire circulatory system while trying to adjust his wings and was most certainly not about to switch it back on. [ return to text ]


	8. Chapter 8

Poets and other shameless sentimental types like to say that a lover’s heart has suddenly stopped when the object of their affections walks away. In this case, as Aziraphale left the room looking anywhere but at Crowley, the demon’s heart actually restarted. 

The reawakened muscle beat far too fast and seized unpleasantly as if to chide him for accidentally switching it off for so long. Dizziness clobbered Crowley as his own stagnant blood began to recirculate, and he sank to his knees, hands clamped over his head like a grotesque mockery of prayer.

When he shut his eyes, Aziraphale’s face reappeared just a fraction of an inch away from his own. The imaginary closeness made Crowley feel like he’d retrieved both wings and taken a reckless flight—dizzier than ever, and a little sick. Aziraphale’s eyes were painfully blue up close, two gateways to a more merciful Heaven than either of them had known. Crowley was beginning to worry he’d been shut out of more than one Paradise, that he’d asked another unanswerable and damning question.

He realized he wasn’t breathing, and reluctantly allowed his lungs to continue their usual business. The smell of the room came back at once, tinged with sweet aftermath of rain and newly-nauseating remnants of wine. Chandelier crystals strewn on the floor gleamed in fragmented iridescence like the scales of something loathsome and venomous. 

_ I’ve poisoned things _ , Crowley told himself as his fingers clutched fistfuls of carpet,  _ but I didn’t mean to _ . He’d always been so careful not to unnecessarily touch Aziraphale. He didn’t trust himself not to linger too long when straightening Aziraphale’s old-fashioned necktie or passing him a salt shaker or lifting a curl of custard-colored hair from his forehead. But the demon would have sworn by every profane particle of Hell that as they were suspended in the air, for a sweet, terrifying half-moment, Aziraphale had stroked him gently where his shoulder blade became a wing. Perhaps it was wine or wishful thinking.

Demons don’t cry, but sometimes their throats swell uncomfortably and their shoulders shake a bit and minutes go by before they can breathe without a hitching chest. 

Several minutes came and went. Crowley started slowly picking up the fragments of the ruined chandelier. He was trying hard not to think about how cold and distant Aziraphale would be in the morning.[46] There were dozens of crystals scattered around the floor, but if there’s one skill that Hell knows how to teach, it’s completing tedious, mind-numbing tasks, especially the type that threaten to lacerate one’s fingers if insufficient care is taken. Before an hour elapsed the crystals were all gathered in a neat prismatic pile. 

Crowley discarded the possibility of sleeping, and sought for something to occupy his fingers so they didn’t keep twitching like startled spiders. He walked softly to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea from the abandoned kettle.

He’d decided to make breakfast, because as conciliatory gestures went it seemed less difficult than patching the hole in the ceiling. There wasn’t much food left on the counter and inside the icebox, but they had eggs and butter and a pantry that had yet to be depleted.[47] Crowley stepped outside to pluck some chives from the fearful garden; they were the only plants that had survived the tenure of the previous occupants. The sky was beginning to lighten, and Crowley knew he would have to hurry, assuming Aziraphale wasn’t going to avoid him all day. He didn’t think he could manage eating his carefully cooked apology all by himself.

***

Aziraphale woke from a turbulent sleep to the smell of heated sugar and briefly panicked about whether he’d left something alight in the kitchen. He stumbled into the doorway with one slipper half off to find the little round table next to the icebox heaped with morning buns encrusted with sugar and smelling faintly of oranges, next to a plate with a large frittata full of bits of green and two steaming cups of cocoa side by side. Crowley looked up from the silverware drawer and hastily put his sunglasses back on.

“You didn’t sleep?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley gave an answer in the form of several indistinct vowels punctuated with a shrug. Aziraphale took one whiff of mingled butter, onions, chives, and caramelized sugar, and immediately felt both very hungry and very guilty. 

Neither of these were justifiable sensations. It was silly to be so hungry merely a few hours after he’d eaten two enormous baskets of chips at the Mortal Man. And it was unthinkable to be feeling guilty for—what, not kissing a demon? He’d been protecting them both from taking a fall off the already treacherous precipice they’d been creeping along for more than a thousand years. Aziraphale couldn’t deny to himself that sometimes when he was feeling lonely he gazed over the edge, into the trench below, and the shadows within were beautiful and endlessly beguiling. But that was a gulf deeper and more obscure than any cavern in Hell,[48] and he knew what happened to angels with an interrogative streak.

As Aziraphale pondered the depths of a vast unknown future, Crowley gently nudged the plate of morning buns forward.

“No marshmallows for the cocoa,” Crowley said. “Couldn’t get round to the confectioner’s up in Windermere, so. It’s just cocoa. Sorry.” It was not an apology about marshmallows.

Aziraphale took hold of a knife to cut the frittata. “Oh, Crowley, it’s perfectly all right, nothing to apologize for. Everything’s absolutely splendid.” It was not a reassurance about breakfast.

It was a reassurance, however, and the frittata and morning buns and cocoa disappeared, morsel by morsel, in the relative calm of relief. It was the kind of tranquility in which disappointment can lie submerged for ages, only becoming exposed to the air again from some massive continental shift. 

Neither of them got up from the table immediately after they’d finished eating. Crowley rotated his empty mug in his hands, looking into it as though the clumps of gritty cocoa at the bottom could foretell Great Plans, divine and diabolical alike. Aziraphale licked his thumb and pressed it to all the remaining sugar crystals on his plate, watching Crowley’s forehead for auspices of further conversation. It was frustratingly blank.

After surrendering to the silence and the need to clear the dishes, Aziraphale took a slim, silly novel to the front stoop to enjoy the last bit of sunrise while Crowley set off to retrieve the car. Outside, the lake stretched away and away to the south. In the soft grey of the reluctant morning Windermere was like melted silver. Bluebells bobbed affably in a northerly wind, as an enormous bumblebee dutifully paid its visits and left calling cards of pollen at every petaled door. At the western edge of the lake, two children appeared and set about skipping stones, screeching when they succeeded. 

Aziraphale saw none of this, and read his book with even more stubborn concentration than he usually did.

***

Several weeks elapsed, and the heat of summer peaked and receded, although the choir of insects that performed every evening had yet to exhibit any corresponding diminuendo at the behest of its invisible conductor. With the approach of autumn, the mossy house became more and more unnerving to the neighbors.[49]

Aziraphale and Crowley traipsed up ridges and down valleys to visit the ruins of Roman forts and the stone shells of castles (it made Aziraphale quite excited and Crowley rather sad). They had long speculative conversations about what was probably going on in London over meals that became less and less apologetic (“The only thing we know, is people are buying just as many books from A.Z. Fell and Co. as they were before,” Crowley joked). The silences between them grew more comfortable again, and filled up with the turning of pages and the clink of lemonade glasses and the poignant drone of the last days of dragonflies.

“I’ve had a letter too,” Crowley said. They were halfway up the hill of Jenkin Crag, which promised a novel view of the lake and few visitors at such an early hour. Aziraphale had wanted to go, and they’d set it aside for the first cool day so as to minimize the unpleasantness of vertical exertion.

“What do you mean you got a letter too?” the angel asked, standing up from the flat rock where he’d been tying his shoes. “I haven’t got any letter.”

Crowley flicked at a small pebble, which ignited briefly before it landed in the grass as a piece of ash. “I mean I’ve got a letter from Head Office too. Well, mine’s a telegram, actually.”

“Oh? Have they given you an assignment, will you need to take a few days to—?” Aziraphale’s eyes were steady, but there was something in them that looked like the thing Crowley felt when he thought too hard about the hollow castles and the fate of the children skipping stones across the lake and all the dying dragonflies.

“Here, read it,” he said, and passed Aziraphale a small folded paper.

“Crowley stop there stop have stop—” Aziraphale looked up. “Haven’t they any idea how to write a telegram? You don’t put a stop for a space.”

“The modern world isn’t exactly Hell’s cup of warmed-over tea.”

Aziraphale gave a tiny shake of his head, then continued, omitting the ‘stop’ between each word.    


“‘Crowley, there have been increasing reports of people leaving Lake Windermere with intent to reform their lives. We suspect angelic influence. Might be that one with the funny tie.’”—he stopped reading and glanced up at Crowley, who shrugged—“‘You know what to do. Compliance will check to ensure area is free of ethereal enchantment shortly.’ Oh this isn’t good at all!”

Aziraphale folded up the letter, fingers playing lightly over the knot of his necktie.

“It’s not that bad, really, nothing like that cravat you couldn’t pin properly in the 19th—”

“Really now,” Aziraphale scowled, putting his hand swiftly in his pocket. “I was referring to the visit from Compliance.” 

“Oh, right,” Crowley said. They began to climb again, immersed in thought and trying to ascend the incline using the steadiest tussocks of grass. At the top, the view of the lake nestled in its hills was achingly beautiful, a deep-green bowlful of dawn gazing into its own reflection. Aziraphale leaned against a young tree and Crowley splayed across a boulder. Below, the last blooms of summer were making a final stand.

“Well I guess we know what we have to do,” Aziraphale said, more hoarsely than he intended.

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other, Crowley craning his head back to see eye-to-sunglasses. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley began.

There was a swell in the breeze and the lake glimmered in the yellow lamplight of dawn. Aziraphale felt his throat catch.

“What do you call it when you exorcise a demon, but it’s an angel? Swear I used to know this,” Crowley said.

“Oh my dear, you are impossible,” Aziraphale sighed.

Footnotes

46 Crowley was trying even harder not to think about how warm and close they could have been during the night, if only the angel hadn’t asked for that all-conquering cup of tea.  [ return to text ]

47 They had, in fact, run out of bread a fortnight ago, but since neither of them recalled that, there was somehow a fresh loaf ready for them each day. By contrast, Aziraphale was prone to fretting that they’d run out of butter, so it was used up with ordinary finality. [ return to text ]

48 Except for the one storage closet containing the extra pens, which are never there when needed for Hell’s administrative business precisely because they are sunk to the kind of unfathomable depth that makes lightless ocean vents whistle softly with awed respect.  [ return to text ]

49 Its eeriness was perhaps augmented by rumor of a large black snake sighted lying across the windowsill.  [ return to text ]


	9. That Small Open Space

Sunlit hours shrank and became meeker as the evenings turned chilly. Around the house, the roar of the insects finally quieted, crickets and cicadas dead or hiding deep underground. The most cheerful birds went south and left a somber sky in their wake. 

Aziraphale was not fond of the cold, but he liked it when the leaves become bright and dry and he found something reassuring in the change of seasons. It was much the same comfort he felt listening to the ticking of his pocket watch. (When you were several millennia old, what was the difference, really?) Crowley, on the other hand, was about as successful keeping warm in the winter as he was staying awake after large meals and blinking with normal regularity. He shuffled from one piece of blanket-covered furniture to another with gloved hands and slippered feet, drinking broth and muttering bitterness.

They’d decided to leave for London the first week in October, knowing Heaven and Hell were unlikely to make any very sudden moves beforehand. Heaven was theoretically mollified by Aziraphale’s reports, which the angel firmly told himself were not lies. After all, he  _ was  _ going to ensure that a demonic influence was removed from the countryside.[50]

Crowley was confident that Hell would not be checking in at a reasonable time because the three competent demons in Compliance had all been summoned to infernal jury duty for the month of September and there is nothing diabolical types enjoy more than passing judgment on others, arguing viciously, and prolonging inefficient legal cases.

It took surprisingly little time to repack everything again, even though Aziraphale had bought dozens more books since their arrival and acquired a number of antique silver instruments from jaunts to town. The suitcases and trunks woke up one morning to find their interior dimensions greatly increased and their fastenings thoughtfully reinforced. Even Crowley had a few more things to take back on the return trip;[51] he’d dug up some of the perennial flowering plants from the far side of the lake and potted them in terra cotta containers he retrieved from thin air. In a modest celebration of the end of packing, and because the kitchen had been largely dismantled and there was little else to eat, Aziraphale and Crowley were splitting a box of chocolates from the confectioner’s in Windermere.

“Right, I do believe that’s all of it,” Aziraphale said. He was sitting on a steamer trunk he successfully convinced to latch itself shut with a bit of divine inspiration.

Crowley stopped unwrapping his chocolate and looked down at Aziraphale. “Positive? Sure you don’t have an extra set of  _ souvenirs _ to stuff into my poor car?” He pronounced ‘souvenirs’ with a French accent as derisive as it was inaccurate.

“There’s no need for that kind of acidity,” Aziraphale replied with an air that was, if not imperial, at least in possession of several ill-begotten overseas territories.

“I dunno, this rate, It’ll be your fault if we keel over on the road north.” Crowley undermined his mockery with a chocolate tossed in Aziraphale’s direction.

“I don’t have to stand for this,” Aziraphale said, though he caught the chocolate with a practised swipe. “Really, I should pack  _ you _ up into one of these trunks.”

“How are you going to get back to London then?”

“I will simply fly the car home. Call it ascension, if you like.” Aziraphale added with mock charity, “I suppose I could let you out now and then to admire the view.”

“Much obliged,” Crowley said, giving up his efforts to hide a smile.

They were quiet for a minute, during which they both realized how dark the night had become outside and how full of candy they had become inside.

“Well, it’s miserably cold and I’d like to get some decent sleep before we leave,” Crowley said, rising from the floor. “Think I’ll turn in now.”

Aziraphale was taken aback, but reluctant to detain Crowley with no more than a request for his company. “Oh, well, certainly, you should rest if you like. I’ll, er, I’ll be awake if you need anything.” 

“‘Night, angel,” Crowley said, and loped away to the north wing.

Typically, Aziraphale did not feel compelled to move around much at night, but something—perhaps the chocolate, he reasoned—was making him restless. He stood up from the steamer trunk and wandered into the gallery, taking more care than before to examine all the pictures. Angels smiled beatifically at him from the walls. Not for the first time, he wondered what it would be like to look at pictures of angels and see a vision of idealized happiness instead of a reminder of interminable staff meetings.[52] He didn’t want to keep thinking about all the responsibilities awaiting him in London, so he walked around the house in an indeterminate loop until he found himself in front of the grand piano.

It had a musty smell not unlike the aroma of many books in A.Z. Fell and Co. Aziraphale took a seat on the mahogany bench and touched a few keys experimentally—it was horrifically out of tune. He’d already used a number of questionable miracles that day, but really, if tuning that old piano didn’t count as divine mercy, Aziraphale couldn’t think of anything which did. The angel’s fingers felt thick and clumsy as he began to play, warming up his courage with a few arpeggios before daring to approach a tune. He drifted from measure to measure in snippets of songs and hummed absently, frustrated at his lack of memory. He paused for a minute with several keys depressed. In the still of the night, the waterfall, its banks newly bereft of several primroses thanks to Crowley’s exertions, murmured its ever-present mysteries.

Aziraphale began to play  _ Jeux d’eaux _ , stumbling a little over the trickier parts at first and smoothing them out as he continued. Notes trickled through the air and the room seemed to brighten as the gentle song poured from a distant memory through the hands of an angel. Finally confident his fingertips could find the keys, Aziraphale closed his eyes.

There had been music in Heaven, back before he guarded the fateful gates, but like all of his life prior to Earth, it only echoed as a kind of static impression. It had resonance but no melody. Humans had greatly improved music, Aziraphale thought, and hoped such a thought was not blasphemous. Take the piano--it was a marvel, a spectacular instrument that two hands could coax into such rich sound…

_ Not that rich, though _ , Aziraphale thought as a rumble of lower notes joined his higher ones. The angel opened his eyes to find Crowley standing to his left with a dressing gown belted over his pajamas, pale fingers playing alongside his and adding a surfeit of harmony. Without speaking, Aziraphale shifted over on the bench and allowed the demon to sit down. Crowley accepted the space; three hands brought Ravel’s piece to an effusive if not especially skillful close.

“You know, Crowley,” Aziraphale said “It’s a pity you missed so much music when you were sleeping for a century.”

“I might’ve caught up a bit. If you’d deign to play a duet with a demon,” Crowley said, reaching over to press the first notes of  _ Fantasia in F minor _ . “Schubert’s one of ours.”

They played every four-handed piece they could both recall, and attempted to accompany each other for a few others--Aziraphale plunked awkwardly along with  _ Pineapple Rag  _ and Crowley’s extra notes undermined the solemnity of more than a few  _ Nocturnes _ . They both stopped playing and started laughing when Crowley made a theatrical crosshand maneuver as Aziraphale leaned forward and received an accidental punch on the nose.

“So sorry, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, shaking out his fingers and trying to suppress his laughter. 

“You devil, what on earth was that supposed to be?” Aziraphale said, rubbing his face with his wrist. He beamed at Crowley.

“Don’t think I’m going to sleep after all, too bloody cold,” Crowley said. “I’ve got one bottle of wine left, if you’d like to finish it off.” 

“I suppose it would be downright irresponsible to end the night with nothing but chocolate in our stomachs,” Aziraphale said. “That sounds lovely.”

In the sitting room, Crowley poured wine into two newly-existent glasses. Handing one to Aziraphale, he sat down on an enlarged suitcase.

“Do you think—it’s a beautiful night, and I’d like to look at the lake again before we leave. Do you think we might sit outside?” Aziraphale asked.

“Angel, it’s freezing,” Crowley whined. 

“Is it now?” Aziraphale asked. With a snap of his fingers the wine in Crowley’s glass became very hot and slightly tinged with cinnamon. The demon’s velvet dressing gown transformed into a heavy down-lined coat.

“Fine,” Crowley sighed. “But if this kills me, you’re officially the evil one. Beelzebub will be expecting your reports where I left off, I’m sure.”

“Oh Crowley, you’re not  _ quite _ so delicate as that,” Aziraphale said brightly, taking up the bottle of wine. He did not see the forked tongue Crowley petulantly stuck out at the back of his head as he stepped out the front door.

It was cold enough outside that breath twirled away in streams like smoke, and Aziraphale hurriedly increased the temperature of Crowley’s wine with yet another miracle.[53] Crowley drew his coat more snugly around his shoulders as they sat down on one of the steps. Overhead, a sliver of moon gleamed like an ice chip amid the frosty stars, and around the house the waterfall burbled modestly.

Aziraphale took a long drink of wine. “What’s the first thing you’ll do back in London?” he asked.

“Besides chuck myself into a fireplace to thaw, you mean?” Crowley said. “I think I’ll buy a crystal radio.”   


‘Will you  _ use _ it?”

“Doesn’t matter, I’d like to have one.”

“I think I might see a motion picture,” Aziraphale said. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“Really? I didn’t make you watch  _ The Great Train Robbery? _ ”

“Crowley, I’ve seen a  _ real _ train robbery, and I really have no need to see one again.”

“Ah, right, I remember how this argument went. Well, film will be a nice new experience for you.”

Aziraphale shifted, rubbing the knuckles of one hand with the palm of the other to warm his fingers against the cold glass.

“Speaking of, er, new experiences—did I tell you I fell asleep here? Twice, in fact.”

Crowley looked up from his spiced wine, mouth open. “I thought you said sleeping gave you the creeps?”

“It’s gotten a bit better,” Aziraphale said. “One seems much less likely to be stung by a scorpion or bitten by a rat or some other nonsense while nodding off nowadays. Anyway, the first time was an accident.”

Crowley took off his sunglasses and set them on the step, looking at Aziraphale for a moment with eyes like lamplights. They were a thousand times warmer than the icy stars. 

“What? It’s only sleeping,” Aziraphale huffed.

‘Did you dream?” Crowley asked.

“I think so. I mean, I don’t think Harry Houdini really stormed into my room and started calling me a fake spiritualist and a cad,” Aziraphale said mildly.

Crowley snorted into his wine. 

Aziraphale continued,“That one was rather funny, but I hate to think what a really frightening dream would be like.”

“You can control them, you know. With practice.”

“Can you? I thought that was made up to make children feel better.”

“Well, you can certainly learn how after a few decades,” Crowley said. “Speaking from experience.”

Aziraphale drained the rest of his glass and refilled it, already weighing his chances of getting an evasive answer to the question he was about to ask. 

“What did you dream about then? During that time?”

Crowley looked away at the reflection of the moon on the surface of the lake. “Not Hell,” he said very quietly. His eyes flickered back up to meet Aziraphale’s, and a long minute passed in exhalations of wine-tinged vapor. Slowly, the demon moved a half-inch closer. 

“Aziraphale, it’s really cold out here.” His hands clutching the wine glass were held in front of him like an offering, the angel thought absurdly.

Aziraphale looked at the tiny, dark space between his own fingers and Crowley’s. “You can light a fire from the palm of your hand, Crowley.”

“I can,” Crowley said, still staring at Aziraphale with a slightly frightened expression. “Should I?”

Temptation, thought Aziraphale, always seems too stark in the parables and the children’s stories. This is what it looks like, a cold-blooded, shivering demon, a warm-blooded angel, and a starry night.

Aziraphale shifted slightly and extended an arm, wrapping Crowley close to him as the grateful demon settled into the crook of his side. Tentatively, Crowley placed one wrist on Aziraphale’s knee. The angel didn’t move. He could smell Crowley’s hair as it tickled his face.[54]

“You know, would’ve dreamed about the automobile if I had any idea it was happening,” Crowley mumbled into Aziraphale’s collarbone. 

They talked about travelling for an hour or so, looking out at the lake instead of at each other, and relived how difficult it used to be to get across the world. Old and faintly unpleasant memories of sickening sea voyages and crueler, colder nights were found, discussed, and discarded. They dwelt on better remembrances: of warm evenings, the ends of journeys, and the beginning of their peculiar Arrangement. The stars moved in slow, glittering arcs across the lake and the sky. Aziraphale’s eyelids began to feel heavy, and Crowley’s head kept dipping onto his shoulder.

“Hey Aziraphale,” Crowley said through a yawn. “If you fall asleep, tell Harry Houdini to shove it, will you? Even though he’s right about your magic.”

As the demon slipped into unconsciousness, Aziraphale was surprised to find he was distinctly uncomfortable. His spine was pushed against the stair behind him by the weight of Crowley’s not-especially-warm body pressed into his side, his face was very cold, and the arm he had around Crowley had gone slightly numb. He stretched his stiff fingers with the gentlest caution, afraid to move too suddenly, as if he might provoke the oncoming dawn.

A single night is a short time in the eyes of someone who has been alive since the world began, and hours are notorious for running out quicker the more you wish them to linger. If time ticked on just a little bit slower than usual that night, well, Aziraphale’s quarterly report to Heaven already included a great deal of artistic license.

Next morning, when the car was a hundred miles along the road to London, no one could remember why they’d been afraid of the old house beside the lake.

Footnotes

50 Of course, he was also going to accompany said influence back to London and planned on persuading the influence to accept one of his extra wool scarves and perhaps a new pair of mittens before it left the bookshop, but that was the kind of ancillary detail Aziraphale rarely felt guilty about omitting. [ return to text ]

51 Crowley was very fond of obtaining expensive things, but did not care much for actually owning them. He also didn’t like paying for them, and avoided doing so whenever it was practical. [ return to text ]

52 That some people looked at angels and saw a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites did not immediately occur to Aziraphale. If it had, he probably would have dismissed it as demonic jealousy. [ return to text ]

53 Aziraphale had a vague notion that all the trivial miracles of the night could be filed under “exorcism” in his paperwork and management was unlikely to inquire about the specifics of the procedure.  [ return to text ]

54 Angels always smell like freshly-baked bread and a hint of lilac, which puts people at relative ease when witnessing the divine. Demons smell like woodsmoke, which is somewhat romantic but typically makes people worry they have left the kettle on and possibly burned down their house.  [ return to text ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to those who stuck with this little story all the way through! In lieu of an epilogue, have a snippet from Wordsworth's The Recluse (full text at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Recluse_(Wordsworth)), which was written about the area the story takes place, and which Aziraphale undoubtedly reread during their stay.
> 
> But two are missing, two, a lonely pair  
> Of milk-white Swans; wherefore are they not seen  
> Partaking this day's pleasure? From afar  
> They came, to sojourn here in solitude,  
> Choosing this Valley, they who had the choice  
> Of the whole world.
> 
> They should not have departed; many days  
> Did I look forth in vain, nor on the wing  
> Could see them, nor in that small open space  
> Of blue unfrozen water, where they lodged  
> And lived so long in quiet, side by side.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for checking out this piece of shameless, fluffy armchair travel. If you enjoyed this, I think you'll like [There Were Angels Dining at the Ice Cream Parlour](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20510279).


End file.
